He said Malaysia is developing in the fastest way it could in a more open and transparent manner despite the sluggish external economic environment.

“I believe Malaysia will reach the objectives of 2020 and will provide the world with tremendous progress as it has done in the past few years in the ease of doing business.

“We see Malaysia as a country very close to our heart as we have the same culture, religion and the same objective of becoming a high-income nation,” he said.

He said this in his lecture, which touched on a wide range of issues to strengthen bilateral relations between Turkey and the Asia-Pacific region, especially Malaysia.

The Turkish prime minister who is here for a two-day official visit to Malaysia delivered a lecture on “Transforming Asia Pacific and Turkey” as part of the Tun Abdul Razak lecture series, organised by the Transformation Research Foundation and Razak School of Government.

About 500 people mainly from the academia, diplomatic community and the civil service attended the lecture.

He said Turkey and Malaysia are both targeting to increase bilateral trade by more than two-folds to US$5 billion (RM16.4 billion) in five years from US$1.5 billion at present.

“The bilateral trade volume has increased in the past few years and we should expect further increase in this number,” he added. — Bernama